About eleven o’clock Madam de Carter came over. “I thought I didn’t perceive you nowhere in the yard this morning and the sun ’luminating so bright and cheerful. You ain’t indispensed, are you? Sandy said you was kinder ill.” She chattered away. “You know it don’t look natural not to see you hanging out clothes long before the noon comes.”

“I ain’t well a-tall this mawnin’,” said Hager when she got a chance to speak. “I’s feelin’ right bad. I suffers with a pain in ma side; seems like it ain’t gettin’ no better. Sister Johnson just left here from rubbin’ it, but I still suffers terrible an’ can’t eat nothin’. . . . You can use de phone, can’t you, Sister Carter?”

“Why, yes! Yes indeedy! I oftens phones from over to Mis’ Petit’s. You think you needs a physicianer?”

In spite of herself a groan came from the old woman’s lips as she tried to turn towards her friend. Aunt Hager, who had never moaned for lesser hurts, did not intend to complain over this one—but the pain!

“It’s cuttin’ me in two.” She gasped. “Send fo’ old Doc McDillors an’ he’ll come.”

Madam de Carter, proud and important at the prospect of using her white neighbor’s phone, rushed away.

“I didn’t know you were so sick, grandma!” Sandy’s eyes were wide with fright and sympathy. “I’m gonna get Mis’ Johnson to come rub you again.”

“O! . . . O, ma Lawd, help!” Alone for a moment with no one to hear her, she couldn’t hold back the moans any longer. A cold sweat stood on her forehead.

The doctor came—the kind old white man who had known Hager for years and in whom she had faith.

“Well,” he said, “It’s quite a surprise to see you in bed, Aunty.” Then, looking very serious and professional, he took her pulse.

“Go out and close the door,” he said gently to Madam de Carter and Sister Johnson, Willie-Mae and Sandy, all of whom had gathered around the bed in the little room. “Somebody heat some water.” He turned back the quilts from the woman’s body and unbuttoned her gown.

Ten minutes later he said frankly, but with great kindness in his tones: “You’re a sick woman, Hager, a very sick woman.”

That afternoon Tempy came, like a stranger to the house, and took charge of things. Sandy felt uncomfortable and shy in her presence. This aunt of his had a hard, cold, correct way of talking that resembled Mrs. Rice’s manner of speaking to his mother when Annjee used to work there. But Tempy quickly put the house in order, bathed her mother, and spread the bed with clean sheets and a white counterpane. Before evening, members of Hager’s lodge began to drop in bringing soups and custards. White people of the neighborhood stopped, too, to inquire if there was anything they could do for the old woman who had so often waited on them in their illnesses. About six o’clock old man Logan drove up the alley and tied his white mule to the back fence.